So’s Norway - quite a few places on the west coast (the most inhabited non-Oslo part of the country) rely on the fact that the gulf stream keeps them unusually warm for their latitude
I’m already seeing things that would normally grow fine out in the garden suffer from abnormally late and early frosts and mild summers. Rip my tomatos and onions. Everyone’s complaining about 20+ degree springs in the mainland while I’m screaming that it’s still snowing in late May.
I think a more interesting (and less dubious) example of this would be Vocaloid and to a greater extent, cevio AI
Vocaloid is a synth bank where instead of the notes being musical instruments, they’re phonemes which have been recorded and then packaged into a product which you pay for, which means royalties are involved (I think there might also be a thing with royalties for big performances and whatnot?) Cevio AI takes this a step further by using AI to better smooth together the phonemes and make pitching sound more natural (or not - it’s an instrument, you can break it in interesting ways if you try hard enough). And obviously, they consented to that specific thing and get paid for it. They gave Yamaha/Sony/the general public a specific character voice and permission to use that specific voice.
(There’s a FOSS voicebanks but that adds a different layer of complication to things like I think a lot of them were recorded before the idea of an “AI bank” was even a possibility. And like, while a paid voice bank is a proprietary thing, the open source alternatives are literally just a big file of .WAVs so it’s much easier to go outside their intended purposes)
Like consistently? Or just one or two days a year? Because I feel like bringing out the electric heaters a few times a year is way better than just giving up and using fossil fuel all the time
Also I’d mention that heat pumps are super common over here in Scandinavia so I have my doubts that it’s an issue with the medium and not something else. Maybe you guys have like, heat pumps that are more designed for the heat rather than the cold?
I’d also add that like, for a lot of Scandinavia heat pumps work just fine? Like does America just have some really bad heat pumps or something?
I think the only reason why you wouldn’t install one here (aside from obvious cost issues) would be if you already have a robust heating system built into your home, like a hot water system. And if that’s the case, you can use the heatpump of the earth - geothermal! Use the power of the earth’s molten core to heat and cool your home!
(… geothermal isn’t as ubiquitous as I make it sound it’s just, really fucking cool)
Ok using your Google analogy - there’s a reason why “librarian” is a job and “Googler” isn’t. One requires years of skill and practice to interpret a request and find the right information and do all sorts of things, and the other is someone kinda bashing keys to make Google give them what they want. You wouldn’t put them in remotely the same class
There is a very real chance they spent more time on this piece than other artists they were up against spent on theirs. I generate thousands of images a month
… you’ve never actually made art, have you? The sort of stuff that you enter into contests takes months to make, from the actual painting to rough sketches to reference gathering, and that’s just the basics
Clicking a button a thousand times isn’t really comparable
Or if you’re using for purely notes, OneNote is like, right there. In your system tray. For free.
I’d also add to the discussion that the reason why Norway (and I think Iceland too) eat it as “tradition” isn’t because it’s some sacred animal or traditional or something, it’s because up until very recently both countries were dirt poor and neither country is particularly great when it comes to arable land that you can grow veggies or animals on. Whale is a physically big source of red meat that lives not that far off the coast, and has tons of other uses besides food too. They’re also small countries so using them as a food source isn’t that damaging (hell I’m pretty sure out of the entire Norwegian fishing industry the whaling part is probably the least environmentally destructive part of it)
Also grilled whale is like, really nice. It’s like if tuna was a red meat.
Whaling still uses harpoons, just more modern and sophisticated ones. It’s more akin to hunting than fishing.
I get it’s probably because people just aren’t used to the idea of eating whale, but it’s odd you’re being downvoted when like that’s kinda the stance I think a lot of environmentalists have here in Norway, though I think the comparison is more to like venison than cows, because venison’s hunted but cows are raised. In the grand scheme of things, the beef industry does way more damage and has more ethical concerns than the strictly regulated whaling industry and we should be focusing our attention on that. I could be completely off though - I ain’t from Oslo and whale is regularly available on the supermarket shelves in the season so I’m obviously somewhat biased here. I know a lot of people have ethical concerns but like, I don’t get it. Pigs are smarter than a whale, but people aren’t upset at pork chops.
Also idk how reliable it is because obviously it’s a biased source, but according to the fishing industry pound for pound whale’s actually way better for the environment than any farmed red meat because you’re, y’know, not raising it.
Been doing that too (though not at the same pace). Like project Gutenberg has a ton of good stuff if you just let go of your preconceived notions about “the classics”. Like you could right now drop everything and go read Ulysses. I wouldn’t reccomend it (go read Dubliners instead), but like you could. It’s like a call of the void.
On one hand, yeah
On the other hand, I’m scared about the day when someone who is tech literate gets into government and tries to push stuff like this
…I mean if Michael Jordon went around saying “we should just like, carpet bomb the place and take over” I think people would also be pretty horrified
I know it sounds naive but honestly I just wish I could consume media and when I like it I can just send them some money without any hassle.
So the artist gets a cut of every stream? Isn’t that just Spotify’s model, which is infamously kinda shit for the actual artists?
Maybe we should step away from China for a moment given their government has a very strong motivation to keep tabs on its citizens and the fact their very mention is biasing the conversation and look at another country which has a strong smartphone presence and I often see posted on here as an example of privacy - Norway
We’re effectively cashless (I don’t think I’ve even handled cash since they swapped the banknotes over) and I think most people do their banking from bills to petty transfers on their phone. You can’t get a physical bus card, because that’s on your phone, or the ticket is attached to your bank card. We don’t have an all encompassing WeChat or even like, any homegrown social media. I’m not exactly sure which aspect of WeChat you’re honing in on so I can’t say Norway does that too, but we do an awful lot via our phones. I do have some gripes about how some things are set up, but they’re complaints that aren’t actually exclusive to this specific system.
Neil Gaiman is also on mastodon (and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the other authors in his cohort are too) though his main social media for major interactions is still Tumblr (which depending on your opinion of the Good Omens fandom, is either a blessing or a curse)
When it’s grilled, whale tastes like if tuna was a mammal. It’s firm and quite lean and vaguely fishy, but in a way you can’t really put your finger on and isn’t really a bother. When stewed, it’s basically like beef but shittier. It’s got this lovely deep dark red colour and is kinda weird because you can’t follow or find any sinew or sort of “shape” to the meat because it’s taken off such a large animal. It’s just this chunk of meat you can’t really identify where on the animal it’s from.
Also I kinda assumed you’d have some whale knowledge because I assumed that you were an American and as an American you were forced to read Moby Dick in class because that’s like the great American novel or at very least pretended to read the cliffnotes on it and gotten the idea that it’s a great and violent chase across the Atlantic for money and revenge, and not like a small crew in a fishing boat in a fjord with a grenade harpoon
I’m not really an expert on this, I just know that the ingredients list on a pack of whale lists Balaenoptera acutorostrata as it’s species and I’ve never seen any other species for sale. We’ve been hunting these guys for a millenia and ever since I think the mid 20th century it’s the only species hunted, mainly because that’s simply what’s native to Norway.
As for why? Norway’s been a pretty poor country for most of its existence and any reliable source of food is a welcome one, and it’s not like whale’s the worst thing to eat. This was never a profit thing like the more sterotypical American whaling industry, it’s first and foremost a food one.
I mean if you tend to plug things in at the same computer a lot it’s pretty easy to always plug things in right the first time, even when not looking because you just kinda know what way it’s meant to be. And laptops usually have all theirs pointing the same way so you know one you know them all. If something has text on it, it’s usually oriented in such a way that when plugged in you can read it. Or they have a little face and you know which way the face is meant to be facing
I have a similar “power” and while I’m not flawless, it’s only really new or unfamiliar devices/computers that trip me up. Or plugs that don’t actually have any identifying features and/or unusual ones